Cancellations and punctuality for train companies operating in the north of England, including Avanti West Coast, worsened sharply this summer, despite scheduling far fewer train services, statistics from the rail regulator reveal.
A review of the performance of passenger train operators by the Office of Rail and Road showed that TransPennine Express and Northern cut more than 15% of their timetable from the previous summer, far more than any other operator in the Kingdom united
Meanwhile, Avanti, which connects the capital with major cities in the West Midlands, north-west England and Scotland, planned 8% fewer trains and then canceled 12% of the day’s services, and more 60% of its surviving trains did not arrive. on time.
train operators
The ORR admitted that even these statistics probably underestimate the chaos in the north, because trains canceled before 10pm the night before – “ghost” services which then do not appear on departure boards – do not they count as official cancellations. This also means that trains missed due to strikes are not counted as cancelled.
The regulator said it was working with the rail industry to strengthen reporting and “understand more precisely what passengers are experiencing on the network”.
Even without recording trains lost to strikes or ghost cancellations, the ORR’s passenger rail performance report paints a damning picture of a growing north-south divide in train services.
Avanti outperformed all others in cancellations in the July-September period, with the fastest decline over the year to 12.2%, with TransPennine Express, LNER and CrossCountry behind them in the rate of decline of reliability.
Intercity operator First Group/Trenitalia also had the worst punctuality score, with only 38.8% of trains arriving on time.
The ORR report echoes recent Guardian analysis showing the north is bearing the brunt of rail woes, in a year of record cancellations across the network. More than 314,000 trains were fully or partially canceled in Britain in the past year to October 15.
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The last quarter, the ORR, said was the worst for cancellations since records began in 2014, and those cancellations excluded six strike days when 80% of services did not they were executed
Avanti plans to add many more services to its timetable from this weekend, with TransPennine Express and Northern also bringing back services and changing timetables, although Northern leaders have expressed doubts they will be able to deliver them.
However, the timetable will be disrupted almost immediately by industrial action and engineering work over Christmas. More strikes will bring most of the rail to a standstill next week, with members of the RMT union at Network Rail and 14 train operating companies walking out on December 13-14 and 16-17 in the long-running dispute over pay and places of work After the trains are reduced for Christmas and New Year and engineering, the strikes will restart in January.